She named the character in her ‘fictional’ account Huda, the very same name as Huda Ghaliya, the Gazan child who lost her family on the beach that fateful day, a day that will never ever be forgotten by Palestinians and people in our movement. Reports of the broken ceasefire were reported here, here, and the media spin blamed Hamas, who responded by firing 15 Qassam rockets into Israel on June 10th. The New York Times blamed Hamas for breaking the truce (“Hamas Fires Rockets Into Israel, Ending 16-Month Truce“), never mentioning that it was the Israeli attack that precipitated the violence. Even still, the Times reported on Huda:

In the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, thousands of Palestinians mourned the death of most of the Ghaliya family and wept as Huda Ghaliya, 7, kneeled to kiss her dead father before he, her mother and four siblings were buried. All were killed when the Israeli shell struck the beach where they were having a picnic. Huda had been playing nearby on the beach at the time. On Saturday, she asked mourners, “Please do not leave me alone.”

The Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniya of Hamas, who called the incident “a war crime,” said he would adopt the girl. Later, Mr. Abbas, who called the incident “a dangerous, horrible, ugly crime against civilians,” issued a presidential order adopting her.

The dead included Ali Ghaliya, 49, and his wife, Raisa, 35, and their children Ilham, 15, Sabreen, 7, Hanadi, 1, and Haihsam, 4 months. Mr. Ghaliya’s first wife survived, said Ayyam Ghaliya, 20, one of Mr. Ghaliya’s surviving children.

A cousin, Adham Ghaliya, 9, was seriously wounded. He was taken to an Israeli hospital for an operation and was listed in serious condition.

On Friday, there were reports of a second woman killed at the beach. The body of an eighth victim washed ashore on Saturday.

The Ghaliya family lost four members less than two years ago when an Israeli Army shell hit their farm in Beit Lahiya. Then, as now, the army said it was shelling to try to stop Palestinian fire into Israel.

Israeli officials said they regretted any casualties among the innocent as Israel tried to stop the firing of Qassam rockets into Israel by shelling the areas from which they were launched. Defense Minister Amir Peretz sent a message expressing regret to Mr. Abbas, who called the incident “a bloody massacre” and declared three days of mourning.

The moment I read Boianjiu’s story I knew exactly the attack she was referencing; there was no mistaking it. Except, in her fictional version the responsibility of Israel’s military for the unconscionable brutal massacre of an innocent family picnicking on the beach in Gaza was erased completely, pawned off as “a dormant shell that Palestinian militants had left by the sea”. Not only that, the photograph was referenced as “manipulation”, and it was anything but. These are real people living through this hell day in and day out in a real place the Israeli military treats as a petri dish for exercises in inflicting pain and suffering.

The attack occurred less than 6 months after Hamas won the January 2006 legislative elections and the Quartet imposed harsh economic sanctions against the Palestinian territories, a precursor of the current blockade of Gaza still in effect today. Later that month, after the attack on the Ghaliya Family, after the abduction on the 24th of Osama and Mustafa Muamar, Gilad Shalit was captured and held as a hostage. Shortly thereafter, on June 28th, Israel officially launched its summer operation, and the next day abducted numerous Hamas officials, 8 ministers, and 26 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

‘How could the New Yorker be so blind to history? Is that even possible?’ was my first thought. It was the magazine’s choice to publish a story that replicates the impenetrable cloak of lies pumped out by Israel’s robust hasbara emissaries. But for a respected publication like the New Yorker to publish a “fictional” story which replicates the horrible death of a family of 7, thus beginning a summer of violence and clearly recorded as resulting in innumerable attacks…I still find this inconceivable and unconscionable.

We cannot forget. We cannot blind ourselves through time nor insensitivity. We won’t let that happen. Unknowingly or not Shani, you’ve picked a scab and opened a wound that will only fully heal when Palestine is free. We will use your ‘fiction’ at the New Yorker to teach a lesson in truth. A lesson about dismissing Palestinian suffering, pain, death; dismissing Israeli collective punishment of Palestinians; dismissing the fact that escalations of violence are almost always initiated by Israel, (“In response, Israel is considering a large-scale assault on the coastal strip, short of the introduction of ground forces.”) which was exactly how this provocative attack was used.

We will never forget. You want to write a fantastical make believe story about Palestinians begging for your attention? Make it fictional. Leave their martyrs alone to rest in peace.

And to the New Yorker, you owe your readers an apology.

Mosaic:

About Annie Robbins

Annie Robbins is Editor at Large for Mondoweiss, a mother, a human rights activist and a ceramic artist. She lives in the SF bay area. Follow her on Twitter @anniefofani

That link you posted was so inspiring, Annie. It happened in 1988 for South Africa and it will happen again for the decent people of Palestine whose only crime was to be born in a land mentioned in a holy book .

The world will get behind Palestine and past all the barriers such as being slurred as antisemite and “the Jews would never do that” and AIPAC and the bought Congress because fundamentally there is no difference between Steve Biko and whoever they murder in Gaza today.

And the plain concertgoing people of the West are fundamentally decent people who don’t believe in ethnic hatred and racial garbage. It wasn’t right in 1988 and it isn’t right now.

I was thinking of how it would feel to see Wembley stadium in London or one of the big stadiums in the States full to capacity for a concert or better still a series of concerts in support of the Palestinians. Imagine 80,000 people chanting “Free Palestine” and all the work that would have gone into that moment. Imagine hoph and bibi and the hasbara army defeated. Michael Oren in disgrace. And Dersh a broken man

Margarik is really pushing it, don’t you think? The more attention this offensive short story receives the better, even if it’s from an overzealous supercilious apologist like Margarik.

And yes Boycott Israel on Campus, students should start to boycott Israel on campus.

I have a fantasy in which I tell all of America about William Empson. Yes, there are more pressing topics than a dead literary critic. But every time a political polemicist badly misreads fiction—as the anti-Zionist writer Phil Weiss has misread Israeli author Shani Boianjiu’s short story (just out in The New Yorker) about IDF soldiers and Palestinian demonstrators—the English major in me cries, and I dream again of subjecting the nation to a semester of Remedial Irony. Because even if New Criticism is not exactly news, Weiss’s inability to parse Israeli art points to an intolerance for the Israeli perspective, a hostility to complexity.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. Weiss quotes disapprovingly the following line from the story, about a gory photograph of an injured Palestinian in Gaza, “The world said that the Israeli Army had done it with artillery fire, but the Israeli Army knew that the family had been killed by a dormant shell that Palestinian militants had left by the sea.” Weiss thinks that’s Hasbara, but he’s wrong.

Though this is the narrator speaking, she’s sticking closely to the perspective of the protagonist Lea, who is an IDF soldier, and so of course hears the army’s explanation. Similarly, a sentence like, “Route 799 cut through the West Bank, but had been closed to Palestinians since 2002, when the motorcyclists were shot,” contra Weiss, is not an assertion of the whole, objective truth: It’s how Lea understands it. Weiss may have a beef with Lea, but you cannot blame George Lucas for Darth Vader.

Nor is it even clear Lea buys the “dormant shell” explanation. Notice how “knew,” a verb describing mental activity, is ascribed to “the Israeli Army,” a collective noun which cannot “know” anything. Notice also how the totally definite “knew” is played against the doubled “had” phrases (what we critics call hypotactic past perfects), which—especially in a story written in short terse sentences— suggest complexity and confusion. This is pretty blatant irony.

“This is pretty blatant irony.” — You know I really think Magarik believes this. Sad. And you know, I bet, he is against the settlements. A real good, liberal, smart, well-educated Jewish boychick. The banality of evil.

I had no stomach to read the New Yorker story. Perhaps it is indeed written using “unreliable narrator”. Rashomon is perhaps the ultimate unreliable narrator story, where the same event is described by witnesses and participants and ALL are unreliable, including a ghost contacted through a medium. So the classic application of “unreliable narrator” offers ample clues about his/her unreliability.

But postclassic method often leaves it to the reader to ponder the web of self-serving deceits. My favorite is the review of Kenneth Star impeachment report, where the reviewer wrote: “Halfway through the book you realize that the main point is not that the protagonist is wicket but that the narrator is insane”.

Shani Boianjiu is an ex idf-er. Or I should say, an ex member of the Apartheid occupation forces, a land thief, an ethnic-cleanser and killer.

Now we can plainly call her a wicked plagiarist of the worst kind – a self-absorbed immoralist who preys on the fabric and sinew of human suffering for fame and profit – a hasbara janitor who’s been assigned the duty of cleaning up the blood of innocent Palestinians that’s splashed all over her murderous friends in uniform.

I strongly advice the legal representatives of the orphaned Huda Ghaliya to sue both the pants off Shani Boianijiu and the New York Times IMMEDIATELY!

Even the worst anti-zionist has never ventured into the vile terrain of fictionalizing the sorrows of Anne Frank without once mentioning the nazis that were hunting her down. Nor have the Fogel family had the story of their murder stolen detail by detail by an anti-zionist literati.

I agree with you Taxi.
It may be worth pointing out that as she is said to be 24 now (don’t know dob), she was likely a participant in some of the events of 2006, being 18 then and inducted into the IOF sometime during that year. Perhaps this event was a seminal moment for her, one that could have opened her eyes to the truth. Instead it seems she ran for and embraced the hasbara cover-up.

said to be 24 now ….. she was likely a participant in some of the events of 2006

she’s old enough to know better. i’m just wondering if this ‘fiction’ occurred to her all on her own, or if we can expect to see more ‘fiction’ like this being funded and supported by the mfa, the israel project, the david project, etc etc etc. it’s a little sqeaky to me.

but the new yorker, seriously.

i hope people who read the article, those who are not aware of the trajectory of those crucial months in 06, see how this massacre has been erased from the history of the summer. even wiki erases it and begins the hostilities as beginning as a result of shalit’s capture. this broke the ceasefire. israel wanted a pretense. it is not that different than what is going on right now in gaza. israel has been attacking and agitating and finally hamas erupts.

with elections coming up. and just a couple days ago erakat announced he was going to the UN..perhaps this month. so they massacre when it suits their agenda. then, and now.

this was a famous massacre. if hasbarists think they can use it to make pallywood claims we can retell the history the way it came down chronologically.

Good stuff Taxi. Literary hasbara is vile. Very good point about Anne Frank. Nobody has ever explored the story from the point of view of the people who killed her. I wonder why. Oh yes, I remember now. Germany turned its back on insane militarism in the late 1940s.

The bigger question, Taxi et al is: how did this not particularly good writer get her piece in the New Yorker (not the NYT, BTW, but details, details)? This is a publication that gets thousands of potential contributions monthly, just begging for a chance to be published?

What connections must she have had to get this amazing chance to have her High Schoolish piece-de-hasbara get an exposure nominally reserved for works that can at least lay claim to something literary?

And how did she find so quickly an agent for her book? if anyone tried to publish a book lately – it ain’t a walk in the park for a first time author, certainly not in the very crowded fiction publishing world. Based on the published trash one could think of it as pandering to chick lit genre, but nay, even that doesn’t cut it.

Actually, the genre this fits is zio-porn. So sexy, that….especially for the Florida nursing home crowd set…

Every coupla months or so, a new york publisher puts out a book by an israeli ex-idfer. Last time it was some gormless talentless ex-idf git whose name is unmemorable and he too was a first time ‘published’ writer. MW did a piece on him: if memory serves, he was doing a speaking tour to promote his book and hasbara, and got a massive walkout from silent protestors at some university venue. At the time I too posted my suspicion of his easy access to a publisher considering his undeniable lack of imagination and flaccid penmanship. I bet with a little scratch of the surface, we’d find these ex-idf unwriters probably share the same zio book agent and publicist too.

There’s probably a guaranteed audience for this sort of tripe. It goes on the shelf and the wall of books ‘proves’ to the owner’s satisfaction that Israel is good, he is good, and all is right with the world.

One gets this a lot — usually in more innocuous form. Like that guy who started out with ‘How the Irish Saved Civilization.’ Sure enough: he was back the next year with ‘How the Jews…’ Then it was ‘How the Poles…’

In that case, the books of course are a suitable present to get for your ethnic grandpa. Everyone’s happy. No harm done — even if they are tripe. The guy’s hit upon a gold mine. We’ve got Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, Swedes…he’s set.

This is more or less the same thing. Get this year’s book ‘proving’ Israel is right. It’s a bit more vicious, but since they’re only going to be read by the converted (if them) anyway…

@Dannaa — How does this get published? That’s an interesting question. Here is what I see on the Net. First, the New Yorker picked it up because Bouianjiu is a hot property in her publisher’s (Crown) view. They already reportedly have sold the rights for 22 translations. She has benefited from an apparently equally hot patron in the novelist/poet Nicole Krauss.

She is a pretty, hip, young Jewish-Israeli women who graduated from Harvard and taught herself to write in English. She writes about sex. A prolonged description of a gang rape is the subject of one of the concluding chapters in her forthcoming novel. I think your characterization of the story as Zio porn could be right on. I also feel she is money in the bank. Then, when you consider that the author is the youngest person to ever receive the National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” award and is the only recipient this year (maybe in any year) that does not have a published book, you just know we must by looking at a literary phenomenon. ;D

I think there is a big market for her book that goes beyond the altercockers in Miami. Maybe it could go over big among the liberal “we are not that bad” Zionist crowd in Brooklyn. Crown is pushing it as an Israeli Catch 22 written from a young female hip perspective. My impression is that her critical view of the IDF life will gain her liberal cred and deflect criticism of any anti-Palestinian bias.

I agree with Annie and Adam that the use of the Huda Ghaliya story was over the top. This is the Achilles heel if there is one. But it is very difficult to get people to go after fiction. They say it is just fiction or the author is being ironic or the character is not the author or some such crap.

Yeah, did you ever see a black student suffer through “Birth of a Nation” in a film seminar.” It is not a pretty sight. But, then, it is only fiction. Maybe the some dialog group will use Shani’s book to help the members better understand how the Israeli occupying army is actually made up of caring, feeling, and intelligent oppressors who should be given more sympathy as the critique in Open Zion implies.

Some day someone in the semi-mainstream press who is critical of Israeli policy and the pro-Israel lobby will go after this bullshit. I have someone in mind and sent that person the links. I am not holding my breath, though.

So far the only places that have written about the Shani “controversy” are this site and Margarik apologia at Open Zion.

My worry is that after the 9/11 publication date (coincidence?) of her novel “The People of Forever Are Not Afraid,” we will learn how to pronounce Shani’s last name.

Thanks Ira for the additional info. Personally I just can’t get over how unimpressive the writing is (I mean for the New Yorker) and, based on the excerpt provided, how 2 dimensional, slam bang standard the two characters portrayed are. If this was a piece submitted to any one of the Creative Writing workshops I attended here and there (why I should do so is another story*), it’d have been critiqued rather harshly and the writer sent to their drawing boards to improve their characterization skills.

Seeing that you know what else is in the book, there’s a possibility that publishers are desperate for anything that can coast on the spectacular success of “50 shades of grey”. but I’ll point out that the break-out success of that book from the pure “erotica” genre into the mainstream has been attributed to unusually complex character drawings, which may have “legitimized” titillation into fodder for the prurient “mainstream” mind. Plus, of course the fact that the female protagonist, drawn as an interesting person, was the principal subject (or should I say object?)..

So, let’s do something to put a little snag in this Shani [last name, what?} publishing juggernaut. Does writing to The New Yorker help?

________
*suffice it to say that I’d do anything to create a deadline, no matter how artificial…

@Dannaa — How does this get published? That’s an interesting question. Here is what I see on the Net. First, the New Yorker picked it up because Bouianjiu is a hot property in her publisher’s (Crown) view. They already reportedly have sold the rights for 22 translations…

Presumably to every country with a large enough (10,000 sales? 100,000?) guaranteed market for this sort of thing.

It’s nauseating, and of course the falsity should be pointed out, but there’s no dark conspiracy. It’s just making money by telling a known group of people what you know they want to hear. If people were a bit more credulous, you could probably make money writing ‘Why being fat and not exercising is actually good for you.’ Tell people what they want to hear and they’ll buy.

Of course the ‘this is actually great literature and you’re just not sophisticated enough to realize it’ shtick really is a bit much. They could have spared us that.

I would write to Crown/Hogarth if I wrote to anyone. Although, I doubt they would care. Maybe, if you mention the Huda paragraphs, they might considered dropping it from the novel. I emailed the New Yorker, but did not get a response, although the tone of my message probably guaranteed that.

Who knows there may be more Huda-like parts in the book. I agree with you about the writing and with Colin about the economics, although there is a very Jewish subculture angle here, Phil’s specialty. Also there is stuff that could make money, but publishers don’t do. That sounds true, is it? Hopefully, one day some publishers would put Shani into that category. Although, maybe just maybe the novel will surprise us. Still I thought the short story in the New Yorker was a disgrace.

I read that one reviewer said that “the only people who would not like this book are elderly anti-Semites.” Wow!!!

Taxi, I agree with everything you say — and say so well — except that Shani Boianjiu published her piece in The New Yorker and not in The New York Times. Suing The New Yorker . . . now there’s a thought: if only I had a law degree.

Many hats off to Annie Robbins for so eloquently challenging Shani Boianjiu and The New Yorker on their shameful and blatant denial of Israeli atrocities and Palestinian suffering and erasure. Annie is right: We cannot and will not forget.

Great work, Annie! And let’s not forget Nancy Kanwisher’s statistical study reported in “Reigniting Violence,” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nancy-kanwisher/reigniting-violence-how-d_b_155611.html, in which she concluded: “it is overwhelmingly Israel, not Palestine, that kills first following a lull. Indeed, it is virtually always Israel that kills first after a lull lasting more than a week.” Her study covered data from September 2000 to October 2008.

i believe it is logical to assume massive operations such as what happened that summer which coincided w/the lebanon war are preplanned. everyone everywhere knows israel pr apparatus is to continually be in ‘response mode’. therefore when they plan operations, they also plan the circumstances to instigate events they can then ‘respond’ to. they agitate and agitate and then when the response happens, as it did the day after huda’s family was massacred..then the nyt and world press records hamas’s actions.(re the nyt article i linked to in the main text) then israel kidnaps the brothers, shalit’s abduction follows the next day and bingo..wiki etc records operation summer rains has begun. but the real operation started with the massacre.

“Means of Suppressing Demonstrations” is part of Boianjiu’s first novel, due to be published in September.

Boianjiu, 25, of Kfar Vradim, wrote the book in English. At the end of her military service, she studied at Harvard University, where she won an award for creative writing and a scholarship for a creative writing course in Ireland.

Last year, Boianjiu was selected by the National Book Foundation as one of “5 Under 35” promising young fiction writers. She was nominated on the recommendation of author and National Book Award finalist Nicole Krauss.

“Shani Boianjiu has found a way to expose the effects of war and national doctrine on the lives of young Israelis,” Krauss wrote. “So her subject is serious, but lest I make her work sound in any way heavy let me point out how funny she is, how disarming and full of life. Even when she is writing about death, Boianjiu is more full of life than any young writer I’ve come across in a long time.”

“Means of Suppressing Demonstrations” describes Lea, an Israel Defense Forces officer serving at a military roadblock, as she stops to feel her body. “Lea often [said] that she couldn’t feel her body. That she could move it, but not feel it. That those were two separate things,” writes Boianjiu.

In an interview with the magazine ahead of the story’s publication, Boianjiu was asked to recommend Israeli authors unknown to U.S. readers. She named Sara Shilo, Eli Amir and Galila Ron-Feder-Amit.

Boianjiu’s novel will be published by Hogarth Press, an imprint of The Crown Publishing Group, part of Random House Inc. Boianjiu is represented by the Wylie Agency, one of the world’s biggest literary agents.

The rights to translate the book have been sold in 22 countries. The Hebrew translation is slated to be published by Kinneret Zmora-Bitan in February.

i have no idea lysias but chances are some higher ups shuffled her to the top of the line.there’s probably a market for this kiddie iof porn tho. young kids in america who dream of joining the israeli military and going on birthright. makes the perfect holiday gift.

How was she chosen?
This little puff piece might be enlightening:http://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=1697
She’s the fourth author down the page, all foreign. Nicole Krauss received her work from “the Israeli publisher they both share”. It’s all just one more puzzle piece in the attempt to rebrand by all those loyal zios. Strange that the first author on the page was rejected by the NewYorker – the content was deemed to be too disturbing for the NewYorker’s readership.

Rockets were fired at Israel in June, 2005, July, August, September, December. Also February and March of 2006. The Palestinians idea of a “ceasefire” is apparently the Israelis cease and the Palestinians fire.

by hamas? from gaza? not according to the source at your link. it leads back to a 2010 annual summary by ISA(israel security agency) goi intel . i am looking at it now, page 7. it says 401 gaza based rockets launched in 05. maybe you could do some homework and find out how many of those were hamas.

If it’s from Gaza it’s either from Hamas or with their consent. They want to pretend to have a cease fire, so they use proxies. Every once in a while they pretend to do something about it by pretending to lock up the people launching the missiles, then let them go the next day. But you don’t get 6 foot long 200 pound missiles through the Hamas run smuggling tunnels and sneak them across Hamas run Gaza in your shirt pocket. Every attack from Gaza is the fault of the Palestinians elected government. A ceasefire that doesn’t include all the Palestinians in Gaza is not a ceasefire at all.

Wikipedia said 1255 rockets at Israel. They apparently included the 854 mortar shells (page 8) in that total along with the 401 rocket attacks. Feel free to update the wikipedia entry to read “rocket attacks and mortar attacks”, if you like. It doesn’t actually help your point though, since a mortar shell fired into Israel is also a violation of the supposed “ceasefire”.

LOL. I just went to your link. The headline is “Gaza deaths end Hamas ‘truce'” (Their quotes not mine). Whoever wrote that headline knew the “ceasefire” was nothing of the kind.

“The terrorist cease-fire was never absolute, and various Palestinian groups broke it when it suited them, citing a variety of grievances. “

LOL. I just went to your link. The headline is “Gaza deaths end Hamas ‘truce’” (Their quotes not mine).

wow, you so outed me fred. yes, that headline did acknowledge the dead gazans precipitated the end of the truce. and never mind i printed the very title of the nyt article in the body of the main article…which you probably didn’t even read. you are such a tool. how bout you do the minimum when you come into these comment sections and actually address the arguments being made in the main body of the text. that link, embedded in one of the ‘here’ links, was used to support my point, that there was a ceasefire. it opened like this “JERUSALEM – A 16-month cease-fire ”

Reports of the broken ceasefire were reported here, here, and the media spin blamed Hamas, who responded by firing 15 Qassam rockets into Israel on June 10th. The New York Times blamed Hamas for breaking the truce (“Hamas Fires Rockets Into Israel, Ending 16-Month Truce”), never mentioning that it was the Israeli attack that precipitated the violence.

there are three embedded links in that one blockquote.

it is really a waste of my time arguing with you. and no, a mortar shell is not a rocket fred. so both you and wiki are not satisfied with the truth and continue to spin your “it’s either from Hamas or with their consent” propaganda.

Interesting. When have they executed someone for firing on Israel? Got a cite? Let me guess, there was a misunderstanding between terrorists and the Islamic Jihadis fired on Hamasniks who shot back? Not killed for firing on Israel, killed for firing on Hamas, am I right? If they had been smart enough to surrender, they would have been back on the street the next day.

If I am not mistaken, the Noew Yorker is no longer an independent magazine. I do believe it was sold to some kind of media conglomerate, about the time they began using pictures (photos, not good old line drawings) with the articles.

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